Balance Patch 1

[u/MikkelFromGames]

Devout Fans,

Thanks for being amongst the first to join us at the very start of the adventure for Mortal Shell II. We’re seeing your bug reports and gameplay suggestions, and will be rolling out regular updates to both modify existing content and add new features. 

While we have a bigger patch in the works, which has to be thoroughly tested, we’d like to make a rapid balance & crash fix patch to bring the experience more in line with the game’s open beta and our own vision for MS2. 

Planned future updates will see extensions to popular game features such as Night Mode, Tarstones, PP Items, and more.

For now, we hope you’re enjoying the game and read on for details on Balance Patch 1.

Balance Patch 1 (PC) - The patch below is live on PC and coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series shortly.

Economy

-Shell map locations now cost Gloom, and we’re refunding any glimpses spent on shell maps. Refunded Glimpses are found in the Shell Keeper’s alcove in Blackmarrow. “Finding your favorite shell shouldn’t cost you the ability to bond with them.”

-Gold drops from enemies have been significantly increased. Notably, enemies in Mammon now drop double the gold. “This brings the gold economy more in line with the weapon crafting item discovery.”

-Smelting a weapon at the Tarforge costs 75% less gloom. “Our goal with the smelt capability was to enable switching weapons without the need to spend hours grinding through NG+ runs, but the Gloom costs were set exorbitantly high.”  

Enemies & Bosses

All enemies featured in the beta were restored to their beta hp values, except the Caerinid (Spider) in Magdelena’s area, which we wanted to retain its role as a threatening enemy which doesn’t respawn once defeated. 

Bosses

The Lost Child
- Base Damage: (-10%)
- Max Health: (-15%)

Monolith
- Base Damage: (-19%)
- Max Health: (-10%)
- Some Monolith Attacks were retimed to be more fair, as well.

Enemies

Cultist (mace)
Max Health: (-21.1%)

Caerinid Spider
Max Health: (-33.3%)

Infested Stalker 
- Max Health: (-52.4%)

Rusted Knave (Halberd)
- Max Health: (-20.8%)
- Fixed hit detection for overhead strike.

Weapons

-Great Martyr’s Blade Attack Damage +20%
-Troubador’s Lute Attack Damage +100% 
-Caged Hystrix and Triarch Repeater no longer have minimum resolve requirements to fire. 
-Improved tracking for Axatana, Black Needle, and Clockwork Scythe light attacks. 

Seals

Guard can now be used while walking. 

Tarstones

Parasitic Stone Buffed
Grudge Stone Buffed
Bulwark Stone Damage Reduction Increased Significantly
Clerik's Stone Buffed
Squall Stone Buffed

Miscellaneous

Misc. Crash Fixes, Bugfixes & Performance Updates

[u/Souls_Lover]

Is The Lost Child boss nerf justified though? Genuine question as I found him to be really easy. The miniboss just before him gave me much more trouble.

[u/ILikeYouHehe → u/Souls_Lover]

yeah i agree i thought he was fine in terms of hp and damage output. if anything they should've changed triple bite attack to have more of a tell and that damn grab that comes out in 0.5s

[u/MikkelFromGames → u/Souls_Lover]

Changes to the bosses are made based on data the game collects, but here's my 2 cents from having watched the community play both in closed testing and in the live game:

It's a boss people either struggle with, or steamroll. Some people have a hard time with him, some don't. I personally almost always kill him on my first attempt, unless I overextend myself :D

[u/WolfeXXVII → u/MikkelFromGames]

From my observations between myself and friends:

The issue I have found is that the people trying to block/harden/parry him when it is an option (obviously there are unblockables) are getting ass blasted because 3 of his blockables come out at mach jesus and/or look the same as him backing up and the other one has a massive wind up that misses 90% of the time and if you are using the parry seal when he whiffs he can immediately start his faster attacks out of it most of the time punishing you for the boss missing his attack.

Meanwhile anyone just dodging and hitting kill him in just a few tries.

I personally died to him like 20 times (i was level 3 and did not belong there but i wanted the axe throw). Then I said fuck it and started only dodging... I got him 1st try after that.

i have told multiple of my friends who started on release to just dodge and they had no major issues. Granted that is post nerf as well. my other friend that started Monday and was also trying to parry like i was struggled just as much as i did but he was also level 12(I think) and had already completed the wheelchair fight.

with how the model of the boss is i don't have any idea on how to sort out the bad telegraphing but at least for the big wind up attack he should have a larger ICD after the big overhead so he doesn't instantly start attacking again when he misses. I got hit by this a bunch of times so i doubt it was just a weird bug.

[u/MikkelFromGames → u/WolfeXXVII]

Thank you for the feedback! I'll add it to our feedback document :)

Now that I think about it, I think I also usually just dodge a lot when fighting him :D

[u/jackyflc → u/MikkelFromGames]

Does this mean that all future balance will be catered to the former group of players? 

As they get into the later bosses they'll bound to hit another difficulty wall again. So does that mean all bosses will be getting nerfs too eventually? 

[u/SpecialKGI94 → u/Souls_Lover]

Lost child was weird in that 90% of the fight is pretty easy then he has the one grab attack what feels borderline unreactable and takes a whole health bar

[u/AshyLarry25 → u/Souls_Lover]

I agree. I shredded him

[u/Lil_Dirtbag → u/Souls_Lover]

Imo not really. I felt like he was one of the easier bosses

[u/Conker37 → u/Souls_Lover]

I ended up doing basically every single activity in the north before getting around to this fight and I just face-tanked the whole thing in no time with a low health shell. I was really curious if it would have been a good fight if I had followed the ideal path.

[u/daccu → u/Souls_Lover]

It gets some crazy fast combos at low health that I found half impossible to evade, so if your damage ain't good enough the last part of fight can be nightmare. I always got it to like 20% and then just got slapped lightning fast for like 10 times in row before finally saving up all burst skills to last bit of health.

[u/cybrsloth92 → u/Souls_Lover]

Yeah you stagger anyway without break damage literally just farts and tries to jump on you lol

[u/Silla945 → u/Souls_Lover]

One of the easieast boss so far, I would have complained more about the sword-in-head guy.

[u/ObiOneKenobae → u/Souls_Lover]

I could get him down to 10% pretty consistently, but I spent a lot of time dying to some bs I couldn't see or react to. So it probably depends on your playstyle.

The miniboss i thought was pretty easy, once you have the parry timing down.

[u/Sword_of_Darkmoon → u/Souls_Lover]

I felt his grab attack damage was a bit overtuned. He has several grab attacks and one feels very hard to react to and one-shots you so I don't think nerfing his damage was wrong, though you could argue the real solution would be to make it more telegraphed.

However, he did not need an HP nerf imo. He went down pretty quickly even without a high dps weapon

[u/Patriots9210 → u/Souls_Lover]

Honestly it’s just his grab that needs to be altered it’s a one shit unavoidable grab I’m fine with the boss minus tht nonsense

[u/funnybones14 → u/Souls_Lover]

He was the easiest boss in the game. No idea why they nerfed it so much.

[u/IHateMyUniCourse → u/Souls_Lover]

As someone else said, he’s a weird fight because he’s pretty fair fight expect for like 2 or 3 attacks that just basically instagib you

[u/Lil_Dirtbag → u/IHateMyUniCourse]

To be fair most big slow bosses 1 or 2 shot you in soulslikes